Health Care

The children’s diet consists of fish once a week, one egg a month, with rice, beans, ugali and sweet potato. Banana smallholdings are prolific in the region but most bananas are grown for making beer. Bananas are used in cooking and as fruit are expensive as they have to be grown on higher ground.

The health centre in the complex provides a basic health service. Routine immunisations are given, but otherwise no preventative health care is given: for example children are not weighed regularly and there are no dental checks. If any children fall sick they are taken to the clinic and medical expenses while children are residential are met by the school. Teachers have noted that some children return appreciably thinner after holidays because the food they receive at home is not as good as that at school.

Organisations purporting to provide hearing aids have made visits but none of the children were assessed by professionally qualified audiologists.